When Bruce married me, he got a package deal. One of the many reasons that I fell in love with Bruce is that he said to me, very early on in our dating life, “I would never separate you from your parents at this age.” Shortly after I moved to Dallas, we moved my two best friends in life, my parents, to live near us.
For fifty-two years, my life was intertwined with my parents. The farthest I ever lived from them was when I was at Princeton University and they lived in the Philadelphia suburbs, a two hour drive.
When they decided to retire to Savannah, I circulated resumes there and ended up practicing law at the largest firm in Savannah. I was there for twenty-three years. My parents and I lived on the same island. We had dinner together every Friday night.
My parents died in 2022, within five weeks of each other. Seeing them decline, and their eventual deaths, was devastating to me, but I am so grateful that I was there with them through it all.
In addition to me and my two parents, Bruce also married two Maine Coon Cats, who were almost eight at that time, and a French bulldog rescue who was three.
Dillon, the Frenchie, was the star … always. I rescued him from a puppy mill and he was very sick for his first year. I was single at the time and Dillon became my constant companion. The cats tolerated him, attempted to train him, and then just gave up. The four of us were a family unit, with frequent visits from and to Grandma and Grandpa.
Last October, at the age of ten and a half, Dillon collapsed. He had an undiscovered tumor on his spleen that ruptured and he bled out. Bruce happened to be out of town for a few days when this happened. When Dillon died, I lost a big part of my heart (again). The bond that he and I shared was something that I will never forget and his loss is something that I will never be over.
This summer, I said goodbye to Baron and Sissy. These two had been with me for fourteen and a half years. They had seen me through a divorce, career shifts, multiple moves, a new marriage and deaths. Over the last several years, their health had declined steadily and their anxiety slowly dominated their lives. In retrospect, I worry that I let them suffer a bit too long as I couldn’t bear the idea of life without them.
I suppose that is one of the things no one tells you about getting older. Your life doesn’t just accumulate people. Eventually, it begins to lose them.
And when they go, they take something with them. My parents were the last people on earth who remembered every version of me. Dillon belonged to a chapter of my life before Bruce. Baron and Sissy had traveled with me through more versions of myself than almost anyone else.
Maybe that is why losing them has felt like more than grief. It has felt, at times, as though some of my life has gone dark. It is disorienting.
But here is the thing about love: the people and animals we love leave. The love doesn’t.
I still hear my mother’s voice. I still know exactly how my father would react to something. I can still feel the weight of Dillon beside me. And I still occasionally expect to see Baron or Sissy in one of their usual spots.
They aren’t here. But neither are they entirely gone.
At almost sixty, I understand that a life isn’t measured only by what we manage to hold onto.
It is also measured by what we were lucky enough to have in the first place.
I didn’t get to keep my parents. I didn’t get to keep Dillon. I didn’t get to keep Baron and Sissy.
But I got to have them.
And I am forever grateful.
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